Most Americans can name only one local politician from Washington, D.C., and that happens to be the city’s “mayor for life” Marion Barry, famously busted in 1990 for smoking crack in an FBI sting operation (“bitch set me up!”). In March, the city unveiled a bronze statue to Barry on Pennsylvania Avenue, and in many respects the city is still being shaped by Barry, who died in 2014.

Barry’s old council seat in Ward 8 is currently ­occupied by Trayon White, a Barry protégé who narrowly won an election against a Democratic opponent who outspent him 16 to 1. Last month White posted a video on Facebook blaming a late-season snow on the fact that the Rothschild family was manipulating the weather “to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.” We had been happily unaware that young anti-Semites (White is 33) still use the name Roth­schild as synecdoche for wealthy Jews, but the Barry circle retains its capacity to surprise.